1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Workbench for a Manufacturing System or an Industrial Framework and, more particularly, to Multiple Coupled Browsers for the Workbench.
2. Related Information
In the world of Industrial Automation today, manufacturing plants are controlled and monitored by Networks of process controllers and smart devices in the field. These Networks are sophisticated and require intensive IT support. In Automation, Network systems are critical, because failure can spell disaster for a Manufacturer.
Thus, software tools have been developed to assist in the design, configuration, maintenance and control of these Industrial Networks. In the early days, simplistic logic tables were used to implement control code and debugging. As the Industrial Technology grew, however, such arcane methods of monitoring and control proved too cumbersome and clumsy to provide the support necessary for maintaining these evolving systems.
More recently, Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) 10, known as Human Machine Interfaces (HMI), have been specifically developed for monitoring and controlling Industrial Automation systems. While more advanced than the earlier method, these GUIs are user driven. For example, and as shown in FIG. 1, a GUI 10 is provided with a two pane interface. The left pane is a navigation plane that displays a tree of objects 12 relating to an Industrial Network. The right pane is a view plane that displays the object 14 selected by the user. As the user navigates through the tree, i.e., selects various objects in the left plane, the object is displayed in the view plane on the right.
It shall be appreciated that the previous method is completely user driven. The user selects an object for display and the object is displayed. In other words, the old method is not very smart. Nor is the old method user friendly for that matter. In the myriad of systems coupled to an Industrial Network these days, the GUIs of old are far too primitive to adequately assist the Industrial Engineer of today.
What is needed, therefore, is a smart Browser that is capable of assisting the Industrial Engineer of today. Heretofore, there has been no display device which integrates several views of a manufacturing plant in a way that allows the user to navigate through an Industrial Network in a logical and methodical order.